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    Losing the Nobel Prize: A Story of Cosmology, Ambition, and the Perils of Science's Highest Honor
    Losing the Nobel Prize: A Story of Cosmology, Ambition, and the Perils of Science's Highest Honor
    Losing the Nobel Prize: A Story of Cosmology, Ambition, and the Perils of Science's Highest Honor
    Audiobook10 hours

    Losing the Nobel Prize: A Story of Cosmology, Ambition, and the Perils of Science's Highest Honor

    Written by Brian Keating

    Narrated by Stephen R. Thorne

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    What would it have been like to be an eyewitness to the Big Bang? In 2014, astronomers wielding BICEP2, the most powerful cosmology telescope ever made, revealed that they'd glimpsed the spark that ignited the Big Bang. Millions around the world tuned in to the announcement broadcast live from Harvard University, immediately igniting rumors of an imminent Nobel Prize. But had these cosmologists truly read the cosmic prologue or, swept up in Nobel dreams, had they been deceived by a galactic mirage?

    In Losing the Nobel Prize, cosmologist and inventor of the BICEP (Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization) experiment Brian Keating tells the inside story of BICEP2's mesmerizing discovery and the scientific drama that ensued. In an adventure story that spans the globe from Rhode Island to the South Pole, from California to Chile, Keating takes us on a personal journey of revelation and discovery, bringing to vivid life the highly competitive, take-no-prisoners, publish-or-perish world of modern science. Along the way, he provocatively argues that the Nobel Prize, instead of advancing scientific progress, may actually hamper it, encouraging speed and greed while punishing collaboration and bold innovation.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateSep 30, 2018
    ISBN9781541443983
    Losing the Nobel Prize: A Story of Cosmology, Ambition, and the Perils of Science's Highest Honor

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    Reviews for Losing the Nobel Prize

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    • 3/5
      Half good. I really enjoyed the science parts, the story of cosmology up to the present day. Keating does a good job explaining the theoretical problems and how they were solved, with Copernican questions and dust interference being central themes. I did not enjoy the parts on the Nobel prize. The author is wildly obsessed with the Nobel prize; he himself says that he "lusts" over it. This is utterly bizarre preoccupation, and it seems to be extremely unhealthy and terrible for his science and scientific credibility. No wonder his BICEP2 collaboration is now infamous for prematurely announcing results with astoundingly poor judgement. According to Keating, it was all about winning the Nobel; and everything in the paper from the title on was also part of a Nobel-winning strategy. Stranger, Keating assumes that everyone else cares just as much as he does for the Nobel—which is completely ridiculous. Scientists care about… science. Until reading this book, I would have assumed that *no* physicist would orient his career around the 1 in ~10,000 (?) chance of winning a prize eventually (before dying). It seems absurd on its face. Keating's ideas for reforming the prize (and his crazy belief that this would somehow fix science) are equally absurd.